Best Tutorial Sites and YouTube Channels to Level Up Your Design Skills

Are you eager to improve or acquire new skills in digital design and illustration?

Whether you’re a beginner or advanced artist, the internet offers countless resources to help you on your journey. It can be a bit overwhelming to navigate through the enormous number of options, which is why we’ve put together this blog post to help guide you in the right direction.

The key is to focus on the essentials and understand that mastery is a gradual process that involves making mistakes and learning from them. Check out this curated list of websites and YouTube channels where you can enhance your skills in a structured and focused manner. Some resources are free, while others require a monthly fee. Take a look and find the ones that suit your needs. Enjoy your learning journey!

Best Tutorial Sites

School of Visual Storytelling

At the School of Visual Storytelling, you’ll find exceptional courses that teach you how to transport messages through illustrations and drawings. The curriculum is divided into four steps: Foundations, Character Development, Environment, and Storytelling. You can explore the platform for free with a 14-day trial – after that it costs $29.95 per month.

CTRL+Paint

If you’re looking to grasp the fundamentals of digital art, CTRL+Paint is an excellent resource. The site offers a plethora of tutorials for both beginners and advanced artists. The videos are concise, focusing on the essential concepts, there are no ads, and all content is free. For more specialized tutorials, you can purchase additional videos from the CTRL+Paint Store.

Digital Painting Studio

Digital Painting Studio concentrates on the digital creation of characters, machines, figures, and creatures. The site provides three different learning paths, catering to beginners as well as advanced learners. While the beginner’s course is free, the advanced courses require a monthly subscription fee – nevertheless, it’s worthwhile exploring this site as the beginner’s course covers valuable skills for Photoshop and other tools for digital artists.

Paintable

Paintable is a digital art academy, guiding you through various techniques and exercises to improve your skills. You’ll learn how to create digital portraits, objects, and scenes, along with optimizing your workflow to give you creative space and increase your efficiency. Paintable sets clear and achievable goals, requiring only around 10 minutes of practice each day.

Pencil King

Pencil King offers diverse courses tailored to different skill levels. You have to pay a fee for membership, but it includes access to all sorts of courses and an art forum where you can learn from artists from various backgrounds and skill levels to get feedback and constructive criticism on your work.

Vitruvian Studio

Vitruvian Studio offers comprehensive courses for mastering analog drawing and painting from the fundamentals – old-school, but effective. These courses provide an excellent foundation for understanding crucial elements such as light and shadow, perspective, anatomy, and composition, among others. It particularly benefits beginners seeking a solid starting point.

Artstation

Artstation gives artists a platform to showcase their work, seek feedback, share experiences, learn from each other, and even find creative job opportunities. It also offers a wide range of video tutorials categorized into 2D tutorials, 3D tutorials, and career-related content. With its diverse styles and subjects, there’s something for everyone to explore.

YouTube Channels

YouTube has a ton of channels dedicated to digital art. While it can be challenging to keep track of them all, we’ve collected some channels that focus on skills with various graphic design programs and artistic tutorials:

Proko

Proko’s YouTube channel is a treasure trove for learning figure, creature, and animal drawing and design in an informative and entertaining way.

Circle Line Art

Circle Line Art primarily focuses on analog drawing with pencil. The channel covers foundational topics like perspective, patterns, light, and shadow. The exercises they give you are perfect for daily practice to improve your drawing skills.

Sycra

Sycra’s YouTube channel offers step-by-step instructions for character creation, digital painting, drawing, and general art tips. The channel provides a wealth of valuable resources to enhance your artistic abilities.

Alphonso Dunn

Alphonso Dunn’s YouTube channel delves into traditional art, covering drawing and painting principles, landscapes, human anatomy, different drawing methods, and various exercises. Though it focuses on traditional art, many concepts can be applied to digital art as well.

Mastery takes time and practice, so find the resources that resonate with you and enjoy the process of continuous improvement. If you want to learn more, take a deep dive into the design styles of the ‘80s here!